Well my own personal play is i never ever touch any Dlc until level 50 and above cos DawnGuard is so much better with tougher foe's and Dragonborn Dlc is more a holiday once you've done with Alduin. For me doing them early is a waste.

I haven't done Dawnguard yet, but most of the big enemies in Dargonborn are draugr, dragons, and some other, that have large ranges of levels. There is one creature in a side quest that has a fixed level of 80. So you'll get a challenge even if you're level 50+. It's like the rest of Skyrim, in other words.

It really depends on the difficulty level. At medium difficulty you can do them at lvl 20 with some challenge, at lvl 30 you'll be safe. If you want to go to solstheim straightaway after visiting the greybeards i suggest you to lower the difficulty. If you have already an ultra-powerfull character and don't want to reroll, just make every skill go legendary and switch difficulty to legendary too,.

Of course if you have a 20000 dmg sword and an armor that regenerates helath at 5000% speed you are neglecting fun yourself. Throw them away and go to solstheim naked, using only the armor you get there, and you'll have your challenge.

I thought I read somewhere to begin Dawnguard you had to be at least lvl 33 or 32.

I was way past that though for both, and still working on other side quests back in Skyrim main map. Haven't finished Dragonborn as of yet, kinda like keeping the grand finale for the grand finale.

I was curious, however, if there is a level cap in this game, and if one reaches that cap will the game start acting weird due to that little hitch unless one finds some DLC that allows further increases in levels? I hate to quit a game before I've maxed out all the quests and strings in every path.

The old level cap was 81, but now with legendary skills it's up to some ridiculous level. I've never made it to 81, highest I ever got was 79. They game won't act weird, but you won't find many foes at your level so it will start to get a bit boring.

Isn't everything in this game leveled? Why would there be a recomended level? I think you have to be level 10 to access the DLC, I know by the time I got to White Run I had dawnguard active. And it was night which made the whole entering White Run thing more dramatic since there was a vampire and his thralls attacking everyone.

I thought I read somewhere to begin Dawnguard you had to be at least lvl 33 or 32.

My last char got invited to visit Dawnguard Castle at lvl 12.

For Dragonborn you must kill first dragon, go to greybeards, get their first quest, and as soon you go in any town or village you are attacked by Miirak cultist and it starts, no matter what level.

I didn't have the expansions at that time. Before purchasing either of them, though, I zipped through the forums here to check for level restrictiions, or if any existed. Knowing Dawnguard's string was the first expansion release I honed in on the conversation there; that's where I read the level 33 (32?) limitation to begin the string. It could have been wrong, or worded incorrectly and was simply a suggestiion; since I was already above that and haven't started a new character for either expansion, and currently only added the USP DLC, nothing else.

Funny though, all of a sudden I'm having some problems killing the vamps. They seem much higher than they were initially. I have become a target it would seem they've contracted to assasinate now, got me. ; ) Eh, needed a little challenge since the dragons have become so easy.

What are legendary skills? Are those from mods or developer released content I didn't hear about?

You will hit legendary when you max out a skill to the 100 pt limit (or is that 101?). But after the enchanting or smithing reaches that you can't enhance or enchant beyond. Many skills are untrainable by npc's once your character attains a high level, but I'm unsure what that might be.

I do know I can't pay for training anymore even though some of the skills I am trying to improve are much lower than I prefer. They were outside my objective in creating a dual-weilding, light-armoured, sometimes archer (just for the purpose of bringing down dragons) character. I am basing this information on the three basic DLC's: Dawnguard, Dragonborn and Unofficial Skyrim Patch (which contains most the fixes for the original release of Skyrim).

There are probably mods out there that have all sorts of stuff, but when you get into that it's kind of like opening, and as Forest Gump would say: "....a box of chocolates."

The old level cap was 81, but now with legendary skills it's up to some ridiculous level. I've never made it to 81, highest I ever got was 79. They game won't act weird, but you won't find many foes at your level so it will start to get a bit boring.

Ya, well, I've not yet succumbed to overburdening myself with skimming through all the mods (DLC) out there. If I can just keep this little bit of data stable I feel I'm one step ahead of whatever problem may arise that will require spending hours in here looking for a fix instead of playing the game.

I prefer to finish a game once in it's original design (not devoid of necessary fixes which Bethesda rather side-stepped yet once again) then I can go on to bigger-n-better things. Hey, I have yet to finish Oblivion !!! All the crashing issues drove me nutz so I just put it away and figured I had again been duped and would have to wait to make major upgrades to my PC. Can't afford to upgrade hardware outside what's specified in a game's description everytime I buy a game.